The USSR was the only country in the world where the search for Yeti was conducted on behalf of the authorities. The Bigfoot was bound to become Soviet.
The science of the existence of nonexistent
In 1957, the world was agitated by the book “Towards the Third Pole” by the Englishman Direnfurt, published in Moscow, in which numerous stories about the elusive humanoid creature in the Himalayas were retold. As an echo, numerous stories swept across the country that this humanoid creature could live in one of the remote and sparsely populated regions of the USSR, which, I must say, were enough.
The rumors were so persistent, and the stories so incredible, that the Academy of Sciences of the USSR took up the collection and study of information about the mystery of the century, in the end, raising the issue of capturing the hairy ghost to the highest level.
In January 1957, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, there was only one item on the agenda: "About Bigfoot." In addition to the president of the academy, a well-known theoretical physicist, academician Igor Tamm, anthropologist Mikhail Nesturkh and other named scientists took part in the discussion. The main initiator of the search for the Soviet Yeti, historian and philosopher, Professor Boris Porshnev made the main report, who put forward a version that the Yeti may well live in the mountainous regions of the Soviet Pamir, and specifically in two little-studied areas - the Sarez Lake and Muk-Su river basins.
Scientists insisted on the expedition, which soon received an official license from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, as well as a "green street" along the entire route. So that no one would interfere with the scientists, a temporary ban was even introduced for other travelers and mountaineering groups in the places of the expedition.
The commission was headed by the scientist Obruchev, his deputies were Professor Porshnev, animal morphologist Kleinberg and the director of the Pamir station Stanyukovich. Together with a group of anthropologists and climbers as ordinary members of the commission, many famous scientists "men" of that era joined the expedition. In total there are several dozen people.
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The only thing left was to get the approval of the country's top leadership. Academician Nesmeyanov, head of the Academy of Sciences, sent the memo to the CPSU Central Committee. The paper got to the Central Committee of the CPSU in February 1958 and was greeted with understanding and soon the department of science of the Central Committee, where the note was dropped, gave the go-ahead to organize the Pamir expedition. There was only one condition - if the "Bigfoot" existed, he certainly had to become Soviet.
Pulled out the "dummy"
A very representative expedition arrived in the Pamirs, all conditions were created - the search area was cordoned off by the army, they were given the best guides from local residents and, the most experienced dogs from an elite military kennel.
However, several months of exhausting walks through the hard-to-reach Pamir places did not give anything at all. The scientists returned empty-handed. The failure looked also discouraging because the expedition had already been trumpeted "in secret to the whole world" - being confident of success.
In general, having received a negative result, the country's authorities curtailed the commission instantly, having decided that there are no grounds to assume at present the existence of a "Bigfoot" in the Pamirs. And there, Nikita Khrushchev also came to the leadership of the country, who did not believe in all this "nonsense" and criticized the Academy of Sciences for the fact that they were doing "what the hell".
The academic expedition to the Pamirs was the first and the last. But she went around with its members much later. Many of them have lost their positions and career prospects. For example, two years after the Yeti epic, even the head of the Academy of Sciences, Nesmeyanov, who had hitherto been firmly sitting in his chair, had to resign.
Bigfoot Echo
And yet, over time, the epic with the search for "Bigfoot" was continued. Over the years, dozens of amateur expeditions roamed the highlands of the USSR in search of traces of the Yeti. Now without unnecessary fuss and without the support of the Kremlin - but sometimes with strange findings.
In 1986, in the Lovozero region on the Kola Peninsula, researcher Leonid Ershov managed to collect the hair of the "Bigfoot" at the site of the alleged rookery. He gave his findings to the Murmansk Bureau of the Main Forensic Medical Examination of the Ministry of Health of the RSFSR, but the only thing that the specialists were able to establish was that the hair could belong to an unknown herbivorous animal of animal origin.
Nevertheless, today's Russian researchers believe that in modern conditions both the search and the study of possible finds will give a better chance of success. And there is no doubt that the discovery of "Bigfoot" is only a matter of time.
Although, for the sake of fairness, we will say that the overwhelming majority of representatives of today's official science, unlike the Soviet era, are very skeptical about stories about the "Bigfoot." In their opinion, there is no scientific evidence of the existence of the Yeti, except for blurry pictures, questionable footprints and there are no ambiguous eyewitness accounts.
Probably, there is some truth in the words of scientists. After all, any individual, in order to survive, needs a certain minimum number of its own kind. Otherwise, how will the race continue? And here they can't even find one. And the last find of a humanoid primate is several million years old.
However, the number of people keen on finding the Yeti and sincerely believing in its existence has not diminished over the years. Only for the search for this elusive shaggy creature, money is not allocated from the budget now and the army does not cordon off the search areas …